


Everything you missed

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [15]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Arguing, Dancing, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Guilt, Light Angst, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 01:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20417444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.December 1972: Trouble Man Soundtrack





	Everything you missed

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, this is not my favorite fic of the bunch. But I felt like it needed to be here. You guys, though? You wonderful creatures who brighten my whole life with your sweet words and thoughts?
> 
> You're *totally* my favorite and here's hoping you still enjoy this while I work on something that I'm super extra proud of in the very near future. 
> 
> *kisses*

Darcy’s shoes were squishing as she made her way up the stairs that Saturday. Her hair was drenched, and her clothes were soaked through. She’d already been tired and cranky from the extra shift she’d picked up in the morning and getting caught in a cloudburst after stopping at the grocery store on the way home had not contributed well to her mood. 

She squished up the last three stairs and dropped her bag on the ground, rummaging past the bag of coffee and bunch of tomatoes she’d just purchased to find her keys. The apartment was dark when she pushed open the door, but she heard the music right away.

The song wasn’t familiar—all she could pick out was a keyboard and sax as she closed the door behind her and dropped her wet belongings. It wasn’t until she’d hung up her soaking coat and wrung out her hair onto the carpet that Darcy realized the living room wasn’t empty. She caught the top of Steve’s head against the armchair, outlined in the grey afternoon light. “Steve?” she asked cautiously, a little kernel of concern dropped into her stomach.

“Hey,” he said back but didn’t make any effort to turn or get up to greet her.

She frowned and bent down to peel her wet socks from her feet before she slowly crossed the room. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said quickly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Still treading lightly, Darcy came around the chair to be able to look at him. She was relieved to find that he at least looked okay, physically, despite the unreadable expression on his face. “Because you’re sitting all alone in the dark, listening to—” she stopped and tilted her head. “What are you listening to?”

“Marvin Gaye,” he answered, offering no more explanation, despite the expectant look she knew she was giving him.

“Okay…” she said slowly. “Yeah. Because you’re sitting alone, in the dark, listening to Marvin Gaye.” She raised her eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said and got up quickly, moving past her toward the turntable.

“Leave it on,” she insisted, stopping him mid-way across the living room. She watched his shoulders drop a fraction of an inch in resignation before he turned around and dropped back into the chair. The record sleeve was still out on the coffee table and Darcy picked it up on her way to the couch. “_Trouble Man Soundtrack_?” she read aloud before she looked up for clarification. There were two other albums beneath it, fresh from the store, still shrink-wrapped in plastic. _What’s Goin’ On_ and _I Heard it Through the Grapevine. _

“It’s a good album,” he said with a neutral roll of his shoulder. “I used to listen to it,” his mouth dipped into a brief frown. “Before.”

Darcy didn’t say anything, pretending she was studying the track listing on the back of the sleeve instead of studying him. He didn’t like it when she did that. The song faded from one to the next with a three second pause of clicking, popping white noise before she double-dog-dared herself to ask her next question. “Was this something Sam turned you on to?”

The corner of Steve’s lips twitched upward. “How’d you guess?”

She kept her eyes on the track list. “Process of elimination,” she said evenly, feeling very much like she was sliding on ice in sneakers—unable to tell if she was in any danger of falling through. “Plus,” she shrugged, “white people aren’t cool enough to recommend Marvin.”

When she finally looked up, the half-smile had stuck at Steve’s lips, though his eyes stayed on the wall, on the vintage travel poster she’d found that he’d framed for her over the summer. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s probably true.”

Carefully, she set the sleeve down and rested her elbows on her knees. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Steve’s answer was too quick. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Darcy closed her eyes to keep from rolling them. “Of course not,” she muttered and got to her feet. “My mistake,” she said as she left the room.

They did this maybe once a month. Steve would get quieter than usual, withdraw to some corner of the apartment and give clipped, one-word answers to her questions, insist he was fine and tell her he wanted to be left alone. If she pushed for him to tell her what was wrong, he’d snap. Or he’d just leave—go for a run and be back in a few hours with even less of a desire to talk than before. He'd be back to normal the next day and they wouldn't talk about it until the next time. Only they wouldn't talk about it then, either.

She hated it.

It was easier to get annoyed with his reluctance to talk than to admit that it still stung that he kept so much from her. After two and a half years, she’d let Steve see just about every ugly side she had—angry, hungry, panicked, sleep-deprived, depressed. He’d heard a million stories about her family, her friends, her time at Culver with Jane. But Steve had only offered her glimpses in his life before she’d met him. She knew the names of the people he’d left behind—the people he loved—and a few details, had heard a few stories. But what he shared wasn’t burdened by the weight of what they’d both lost. They were surface details, nothing deeper.

She changed out of her damp tights and uniform, choosing to struggle with the broken clasp at the back of her neck than ask Steve for help. It was stupid and forced her to contort herself uncomfortably—almost painfully—to get out of her ugly, mustard yellow dress on her own. But she did it and pulled on a pair of comfortable jeans and an oversized sweater to warm up before she returned to the front of the apartment.

Steve had turned a light on, but kept the music playing and she felt him follow her with his eyes as she made her way to the kitchen. She ignored him and started gathering ingredients to make herself a sandwich. The container of chicken salad and the bread had been set on the counter before she heard him in the doorframe. “Did I do something to piss you off?” he asked.

She didn’t have to look up from the drawer of the refrigerator to know he was leaning, arms crossed, probably looking like he’d rather be doing anything other than asking that question. “No,” she lied, before she pivoted to the truth. “You wanna sit alone in the dark and not talk to anyone, that’s your business.” She grabbed the lettuce and kicked the drawer back into place before she let the door close.

“Yeah,” Steve said, “it is.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before she turned around to face him. “Great,” she shrugged. “Glad we agree. You can go back to whatever depressing thing is bothering you and continue to not owe me anything. But I’m making a sandwich if you want one,” she added. Because he wouldn’t accept it and it would go a little further in making sure they were okay after this urge to argue had passed.

“No, thanks,” he said. “But I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m sorry you’re angry that I’m having a bad day?”

“Yeah,” Darcy rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’m upset about.”

“Well, how the hell am I supposed to know?” he asked. “You’ve been home for five minutes and we’re already fighting and I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to be apologizing for.”

“It’s frustrating,” she nodded. “Right?”

He looked at her with wide eyes, trying too hard to look confused. “Yes, Darcy,” he said deliberately. “You’re very frustrating sometimes.”

“Like now, for instance?” she asked. “Like when you can’t figure out what’s wrong?”

Steve’s shoulders dropped again. “I don’t want to do this all day. Can you please just make your point?”

“I want you to tell me what’s bothering you,” she said plainly. “I want to hear about your life before all this,” she motioned to the space around them. “I want you to trust me enough to tell me about Sam.”

“I’ve told you about Sam,” he argued lightly.

“No,” she shook her head. “You haven’t. Not really. You never talk about how being here is affecting you. You don’t talk about the real reason this whole thing sucks—how hard it is to be so far away from everyone we love.” She paused and caught her lip for a moment before she continued. “I tell you. I trust you enough to talk about this shit. You’re all I’ve got, Steve,” she admitted, finally digging out what was really bothering her. “You’re the only person in my entire life that knows who I really am.”

“Darcy—"

“Darcy, what?” she challenged. “When you get like this? When I have to walk on eggshells and I can’t figure out what’s wrong because you won’t tell me? It makes me feel like I hardly know you and I absolutely hate that. So, I’m sorry if me asking you to let me in a little bit and let me help you with however you’re feeling is undermining your unflappable stoicism, but I don’t like feeling like I don’t know my own best friend.”

Steve was quiet, his eyes downcast somewhere, his gaze focused somewhere by her feet. Just far enough, just sad-puppy enough to make her instantly feel like shit. Darcy waited a few, tense breaths, before she turned back to the counter and grabbed the bag of bread.

“I’m not…_trying_ to be unflappable,” Steve said quietly, hesitantly.

Darcy turned back around and raised her eyebrows. She abandoned her sandwich plans and sat down at the table. “Okay,” she said cautiously, not wanting to jump in too quickly in case he wasn’t actually going to continue. She motioned to the other chair. “So. Flap.”

Steve was slower to sit, but he did eventually and folded his arms on the table. “I don’t…” he stopped and shook his head. “I don’t want you to think I don’t trust you,” he said with some difficulty. “I’ve just…never been really good with this aspect of—” he motioned to air between them before he raised his eyes. “I don’t know where to start.”

She pursed her lips in thought. “What would you have said in your group sessions?” she asked carefully. “You were a counselor for five years—you had to have talked then.”

To her surprise, Steve shook his head slowly. “Not really,” he admitted. “Not—not about Bucky. Or Sam.”

“Why not?”

“It didn’t...” he fought back a grimace. “Feel right, I guess. I was there talking to people who’d lost their families, friends, children...and I was the guy who was supposed to stop it from happening. So for a couple years it didn’t feel like I should talk about what I’d lost because I was too busy feeling guilty.”

She accepted this with a slow nod, trying to understand this level of guilt, the weight of everything Steve still carried with him. “And then?” she prompted gently.

“Then I…” he trailed off with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t want to talk about them because that’d make it real,” he said quietly. “That’d mean they were really gone. And I’d have to actually move on, like I kept telling everyone else. I'd talk about anything else to avoid it.” He brought his elbows up to the table and swiped a hand over his beard. “I mean, Christ,” he scoffed lightly. “Last session I led, I think I started talking about Peggy,” he shook his head. “Like that was…I don’t know,” he confessed. “Like it was even close to the kind of loss I was supposed to be helping them with.”

“And you never talked to anyone about this?” she asked, flabbergasted. “Natasha…?”

“She was worse off than me,” he said. “She didn’t want to talk about moving on.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a scary idea when you don’t have anywhere to go,” he said simply.

Another few moments passed before Darcy cleared her throat. “And what’s keeping you from talking about them now?” she asked. “More guilt?”

He dipped his head to the right in consideration. “Something like that.”

Darcy sat back on her chair and shook her head. “Do better than that, Steve,” she demanded lightly. “Talk to me like I don’t understand—because I really don’t.”

“I mean…” he let a breath blow past his lips. “Does it make any difference if I say that I miss him?”

“Of course it does,” Darcy said firmly.

“Well, I do,” he said. “I miss him. And Bucky. And Wanda. And Natasha.”

“Good,” she nodded. Steve glanced up from where his eyes had fallen to his hands again. “You love them, Steve,” she reminded. “You _should_ miss them. I don’t understand why it’s taken you two years to feel like it’s okay to admit that.”

“Because I—” his fingers flexed, and his jaw tightened. “Because I was going to leave them anyway,” he said finally. “I wasn’t planning on going back with Natasha—I was going to stay behind. So…” he shrugged. “Why should I let you feel like we’ve lost the same thing when I _chose_ to live the rest of my life without them?”

Her brow furrowed. “So…what? You think you’re being punished for making a choice you’re realizing you might have regretted? And that punishment is to just literally suffer in silence because you think it’s what you deserve?” Across the table, Steve opened his mouth and closed it again, clearly unable to articulate a counterpoint. Darcy sighed and touched her fingers to her forehead. “Oh my God, dude. You’re so Irish it’s almost painful.” To her relief, he smiled and gave her enough of a reason to reach across the table and cover his hands with hers. “Here’s the thing,” she went on. “I don’t care what either of us did in our past lives—all the shitty, selfish, stupid decisions in the world did not land us here as some kind of penance. And even if they did somehow—which, _no_ they definitely didn’t because I’m awesome and am definitely not being punished for anything—” Steve smiled again as he rolled his eyes. “You’re allowed to miss your family, Steve. And please, I’m begging you to talk about them. Because I know you hate to hear this, but you were completely wrong before.”

“How so?”

“It’s _not_ talking about the people we love that means they’re gone. Not the other way around. Why do you think I bore you with the mundane details about my friends and family? Because I love seeing your eyes glaze over?”

“Hey,” he looked offended. “My eyes don’t—”

“I know,” she assured him as she took her hand off his. “You’re a great listener. But I don’t tell you these stories to fill the time, y’know? I talk about my old life because if I don’t then there’s no trace of them here.” She glanced around as if looking for clues that they hadn’t just dropped out of the sky two years ago with the clothes on their backs. “Aside from one old photo and now some Marvin Gaye albums, there’s nothing that says anyone we loved before ever existed.”

She didn’t even want to say those words out loud. There were already things she was starting to forget—the sound of her sister’s voice, the kind of perfume her mother wore, the color of the walls in the kitchen at her parents’ house. She’d spent a solid fifteen minutes trying to remember if her father was left or right-handed only a few days ago. She didn’t want to forget these things—didn’t want to have to scrounge her memory for scraps to hold onto. And she didn’t want Steve to have to do that either.

“That album,” Steve said suddenly, surprising her when he pointed back to the living room where the music had stopped. “It was the—uh—the first thing Sam suggested to me when I met him.”

Darcy smiled and felt a little part of herself relax in relief that they weren’t going to keep fighting. “How long after you um,” she paused, “woke up did you meet him?”

“About a year, I think?” he frowned. “Maybe a year and a half? He was—” Steve stopped and smiled sadly to himself before he shook his head. “It sounds…kind of pathetic.”

“Tell me anyway,” Darcy insisted good-naturedly. “I want to know what he’s like.”

She watched his face change while he sorted through what he wanted to say before he finally spoke again. “He’s one of the best people I know. If anyone should have been Captain America…”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true,” he said simply. “Everything I’m supposed to be…everything everyone expects from the guy holding that shield…Sam already is without trying.”

Desperately wanting to make him laugh again, Darcy steepled her fingers and feigned a deep thought. “But would he look as good in the spangly hot pants?”

To her relief, he did laugh. It was a real laugh, even though he cut himself short. “Better, probably,” he said before he sobered. “No, but really. He’s one of the only people who’s ever just…”

“Just what?” she asked softly.

“Wanted to be my friend,” Steve said with a soft laugh and Darcy felt a deep twist of sympathy in her chest. She didn’t want to think about how true those words were. The kind of loneliness that had followed Steve around his entire life. “Y’know, that I didn’t meet in war zone or because we were almost vaporized or attacked by aliens together. Sam just…” he shrugged, “kept choosing to be in my life because he wanted to be there.”

“Sam sounds like he has great taste.”

Steve laughed softly. “No, Sam has terrible taste—in friends, at least. And no sense of self-preservation.”

“Hmm, and you two hit it off?” Darcy asked. “Ya don’t say.”

“I’m serious,” he insisted. “He had every opportunity to not get tangled up in all my bullshit and he kept opting in.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how many times he almost got killed—not to mention he was a fugitive after he got arrested and sent to the Raft—”

She held up a hand. “I’m sorry, what is the Raft?”

“It’s an underwater prison near Rykers,” Steve said. “I don’t think many people are supposed to know it’s there.”

“That sounds…unconstitutional.”

“And a bitch to break into,” he added with a wry, half-smile.

“Oh?”

“I was the reason they were there in the first place,” he reminded. “I had to get them out—and I didn’t think waiting for due process was all that realistic. But, um,” Steve’s eyes dropped to his hands again. “When I got there, Sam…” he stopped and considered his words before he went on. “He almost looked surprised. Like he wasn’t sure I’d come back for him.” He paused again. “I asked him about it later on and he said he figured I would, but he would have understood if I didn’t. That he wouldn’t have regretted helping me get Bucky somewhere safe, no matter what happened.”

Darcy smiled softly. “I see what you mean about him being Captain America,” she said. “He sounds way better than you.”

Steve laughed again. “You can tell him that in person when you meet him someday,” he assured her. “Something tells me he’s going to love you.”

“Why?” she asked, fighting a sudden and uncomfortable urge to blush. “Because I don’t put up with your bullshit?”

“Among other reasons,” he said quietly.

She glanced down at the table, unsure of what to do with the way her mouth had just run dry at the sight of Steve’s smile aimed in her direction. She cleared her throat and stood up. Steve watched her with a look of surprise that turned dubious when she beckoned for him to get up. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” he asked, hesitantly allowing her to pull him to his feet.

She dropped their hands as soon as they’d crossed the threshold back into the living room. “Given everything I just learned about Sam Wilson,” she began, turning from him to retrieve one of the other albums from the coffee table, “he does not seem like the kind of guy who would want to be celebrated by his best friend sitting in the dark.” She slid a nail along the seam of _I Heard it Through the Grapevine_ and slid the record free from its sleeve, enjoying the brief inhale of a fresh vinyl she’d never been able to appreciate before. She swapped out _Trouble Man_ from the turntable and dropped the needle. “He seems like the kind of guy who would appreciate some dancing.”

“Oh Jesus,” Steve muttered, but it was around a sigh that sounded too affectionate for her to worry he wouldn’t join her.

“Come on,” she said again as the music began started and her hips started swaying on their own. “My mom? The _Lord of the Rings_ nerd?” Steve nodded in recollection. “She used to say every great adventure needed a Sam—either in practice or in name—” she added quickly before she grinned and took Steve’s hand, forcing him to twirl her under his arm.

“She’s not wrong about that,” Steve admitted.

“So what better reason to dance to some _seriously_ groovy tunes than the double-whammy of Melinda Lewis being right about yet another thing and to celebrate the existence of Sam Wilson and all the ways he made your life better?” She scoffed before he could answer. “From where I’m standing, neither of them would have it any other way.”

Steve sighed again and lost his fight to hide his smile. “It’s hard to argue with logic like that,” he said and took her hand to spin her out properly.

“Good,” she said over Marvin’s silky vocals. “I’ve had enough arguing for one day.”

Steve was no longer trying to fight his smile when he spun her back in and she crashed clumsily into his chest with a giggle. “So have I.”

**Author's Note:**

> Darcy's "So. Flap." is from Angel, season 1, though I don't remember which specific episode. 
> 
> And I hope no one takes offense to the comment about Steve's Irishness. As a half-Irish lass myself, I feel like it's a fair assessment. 
> 
> \--
> 
> Come play with me on tumblr: @idontgettechnology and join me at ishipitpod.com for weekly podcast on fandom and fanfic by yours truly.
> 
> *kisses*


End file.
